How can we tell from the inside of our Universe if it’s actually real or just a hologram? Boffins at Fermilab have set out to answer this thorny question with a new experiment in the National Accelerator Lab called the Holometer.
A Fermilab scientist works on the laser beams at the heart of the Holometer experiment
Lasers …

Re: Interesting times

@Chemist

"... so this isn't anything more than a thought experiment unless you've seriously been dieting"

I suspect people cut down on thought experiment production by thinking less. I've tried everything, South Beach (thinking like a Blonde), Low Carbohydrate (thinking like a rock) ... if this diet works it will life-changing for millions.

Re: Interesting times

A photon doesn't have a perspective, but I digress.

The whole idea of time either going slower or faster is from the observer's point of view, for whoever is inside the "event" where this timeshift happens it appears as if nothing has happened, for them. Except if they were able to observe the observers they would find their time is either moving slower or faster.

Going from that I would think that if you were to travel on a photon and if said photon would travel instantaneously it would still appear from your point of view as if time would behave normally.

I like theoretical physics, you can make up all kind of (bogus) thought experiements without the burden of proof. ;-)

Re: Interesting times

"as if time would behave normally."

Indeed, but normal for a photon - photons don't experience time. You would still arrive at your destination instantly - your watch would not have ticked - that's normal for a photon. But, but you still can only do any of this if your rest mass is 0.

Sounds weird I know but that's the universe for you. As an object approaches c its 'clock' runs slower and slower - at c it stops. This photon if it was sentient would experience its entire trip from emission to absorption as a single composite image

Re: Interesting times

YOU ARE!! I had to say that. That was my first contribution to the theory at about 9 years old, and there are about an infinite number of arguments against it--and it was even covered prior to that (sometime in the 1940s I believe but don't ask me who)--but the thought still intrigues me.

Re: "But you also can't prove a negative"

From a logical point of view you CAN prove the negative of a general statement. It is enough to observe ONE instance that contradicts the general statement. On the contrary, in order to prove a general statement true, you should observe all possible instances of that statement (in natural science all occurrences of a phenomenon): in principle infinitely many.

In natural science this is relevant given the additional assumption that we can, in principle, make the measurement error, on an specific quantity, as small as we like.

Re: Interesting times

>>You can prove a theory to be true by showing that it being false would lead to a contradiction.

Technically true (called either of the following ex adverso, reductio ad absurdum, by contradiction), however, might be quite problematic to build a whole theory with this method. It is certainly easier to prove a single theorem (statement) out of many the given theory consists of. In proving every theorem you of course can try arguing one at a time by contradiction. It concerns Physics, Math and other sciences.

It usually works best/easiest when alternatives to a statement are few (like finite/infinite, unique/non-unique, rational/irrational). Say, the proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic stating that prime numbers are infinitely many, a well-known proof, ascribed to Euclid comes to mind as one beautiful example. Or in proving that sqrt(2), sqrt(n) are irrational, with n being a not perfect square integer. Similarly many existence and uniqueness theorems are proven by contradiction for uniqueness, but not existence.

Re: Interesting times

Seems to be plenty of similar experiments like this either to detect the ether, gravitational waves etc and they all suffere from the fact the Earth is a bloody noisy place with vibrations coming from so many sources.

this is an experiment that if proved true, does not actually help us with anything!

Re: Interesting times

This was discussed in the August issue of Scientific American. I have a niggling feeling that in a universe with 4 extended spatial dimensions, attractive forces exerted by a "point" like object would fall off in accordance with an inverse cube law rather than the inverse square law in our universe. This would mean that bound structures such as electrons orbiting atomic nuclei and planets orbiting stars are not possible. Not sure about atomic nuclei and the strong and weak forces though.

Unfortunately at this time in the morning my maths isn't up to exploring this further.

Re: Interesting times

Well a dutch scientist already made the the math to explain gravity just as a side effect of what you describe. On the other side it might be possible that true empty space has a different nature (it cann't be made due to quantum fluctuations). Dough i wonder if QM is just realy the end of measuring and certainty. I rather hope for a a nice mix perhaps something with fractals endless infinite patterns and strings / membranes. As to me inflation just doesnt sound right.

Re: Interesting times

I guess you've seen the new COSMOS series with Neil deGrasse Tyson. He actually talks about this exact scenario in one of the episodes so I"m guessing it's becoming more mainstream now. When I first heard about it years it was all a bunch of pseudoscience LOL.

Re: probably already has

Excellent

I first heard about this about 2 years ago on a Horizon program entitled "What is reality?". As the first poster indicates, the idea is that "reality" exists only on the surface/edge of the universe, and everything inside it is just a projection of that surface.

If something as bonkers as this is proven true then (a) it would be very exciting and (b) it might explain other strange phenomena like odd socks being eaten by the washing machine.

Re: Sock gnomes

Actually, behind the 2D surface universe lies a significant black hole which, though unobservable, channels all the teaspoons from all school staff rooms to a distant and spoon laden part of the universe.

Re: Excellent

it might explain other strange phenomena like odd socks being eaten by the washing machine

This has already sufficiently been explained and got nothing to do with crazy universe models: it's the other pieces of clothing agreeing on sacrificing a sock to the Great God of Washing. Proof: put only one sock on its own through the washing cycle and it won't disappear - socks usually are not suicidal.

Re: Excellent

The gods have nothing to do with it. Stuff disappearing is down to mini wormholes that jump about in your house. They connect random places and normally go unnoticed.

Until they suddenly open up! And it's not just socks, the car keys you put in the bowl by the door will end up down the sofa with your change and that little screwdriver you left in the garage. And that bottle opener you used on the sofa is now in the drawer underneath the cutlery. Your sock is now somewhere else, back in the washbasket or under the chair or in the garden.

The mini wormholes open when there is sufficient mass of similar items. This explains why your shirt disappears from the hotel laundry but only socks from your washing machine, the more mass the bigger the item that can pass through the wormhole. So most of that change you got in the pub last night has vanished and is in the kid's pockets or the wife's purse or the change bottle thanks to the mini wormhole and the sheer mass of change. Also why my drill, lawnmower and spade is in the neighbours shed!

Of course this is only a theory. I might be able to prove it if anyone fancies funding my beer habit research.

Re: Excellent

While I prefer my own theory when it comes to cutlery firu's would explain another cosmological mystery. Any rope, hosepipe or electrical lead wrapped up neatly and placed in a suitable dark place for more than two weeks will become a tangled mess that no amount of delierate human action could have achieved. Clearly mini wormholes are the only possible explanation for this.

Re: Excellent

@Terry 6; you think they need a dark place? When I built a new computer desk for my gaming PC about three years ago I very carefully cable-tied all the leads for controllers, soundcards, external hard-drives, TrackIR etc. I used seperate cable ties for each device, When I came to move it last month what did I find? TANGLED CABLES!

Re: Excellent

Re: Excellent (quantum theory of socks)

Quantum theory tells us that the sock is in a superposition of the states "missing" and "not missing" until an observation is made. So it's the very act of looking for it that makes it go missing. Simples.

Re: Excellent (quantum theory of socks)

Re: Excellent (quantum theory of socks)

> Sounds like a certain cat...

I've discovered a small-dog-shaped wormhole which redistributes socks (and indeed underwear) around the house and the garden. I've yet to fathom the "neat cables go into the bag, tangled ones come out" mystery.

Re: I was thinking of another type of hologram

Re: I was thinking of another type of hologram

Well there could be two differently lost socks or, potentially, the same sock at different points in it's existence (though the same point in ours) though of course that could be used to prove sock time travel, which would open up a whole new can of worms - or a whole new washing machine if using the sock-idiom.

It's just mathematical equivalency

We need to remember that the universe doesn't really run on mathematical formulae - they are just models. Electrons don't do a quick calculation before deciding how much energy to emit as a photon when changing orbitals. It all "just happens" and we try to model it with equations that have predictive power.

We already know our perception is just a simulation built inside our heads. For one thing, the bandwidth of our optical and auditory systems is not nearly enough to present a full video and audio recording of the perceived world, yet we have that illusion.

So arguments about whether the universe is a "simulation" are nonsensical. The universe is what it is. What matters is whether it can be modelled more conveniently and more accurately with a different model, just as Newton's laws allowed planetary orbits to be calculated more simply and reliably than did epicycles. The general relativistic universe is just a better simulation than the Newtonian universe, and that's a much better simulation than the Copernican universe. But they are all simulations, and our perception of the world is another one.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

If it is a mathematical equivalency then both descriptions are equally valid but there may be some circumstances in which it easier to calculate something with one formulation than with the other. This contrasts with things like the difference between relativity and newtonian physics where the two theories predict different things.

I'd imagine that for most things it would be easier to calculate things using the theory describing 3 dimensional space. The laws of motion etc on the holographic surface would probably be a lot more complicated. If this mathematical equivalence does exist then that is a new mystery. Why should a description of the universe have to support such an equivalence ?

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

This isn't Platonism which holds that mathematical/abstract objects exist in some non-physical form - see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/

Instead we are considering the possible mathematical descriptions of the Universe. That is those mathematical structures which correspond to experiments and observations of the universe.

It just seems unlikely that the form that a mathematical description of the Universe would take should require such a strange equivalence. It is like the fine tuning of physical constants in our current theories - it just doesn't seem likely unless you either invoke God or an infinity of Universes + the anthropic principle. But unless there is some particular reason why life depends upon such an equivalence I'm not sure that the anthropic principle can explain this particular requirement.

The previous mathematical equivalency between different versions of string theory served to extract string theory from having too many versions of the theory of everything. This one though seems to add an extra rather odd constraint. It may turn out that there is some underlying symmetry which creates the requirement for this constraint but at the moment it just seems odd to me.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

Arnaut,

You wrote

"

As soon as you start asking questions about whether there is some sort of ultimate reality underlying mathematics, you're into Platonism. AFAIK, mathematicians are always discovering that "this" way of doing something is equivalent to "that" way of doing something, and the different routes are connected as some more fundamental level.

Mathematics is the matching of patterns and hence it isn't surprising that the same pieces of mathematics can be reused in different areas where the same patterns turn up. Mathematical equivalence of two theories is somewhat different - in that case two apparently very different patterns turn out to really be the same. This is somewhat rarer.

The alegory of the Cave like the parable of the blind men and the elephant points out that our perceptions are not reality. However they are all we have to try and discern reality.

In a sense the holographic principle seems to be Plato's cave in reverse. The two dimensional shadows are supposedly creating the 3D world we see around us. Normal shadows cannot do this - the 2D images need to somehow encode the 3D images. We can do this with holography but only by starting with a real 3D object and using two laser beams to create a 2D interference pattern.

This interference pattern then being later redisplayed as a 3D image when another laser beam is passed through it at the right angle. Having a physical arrangement where the surface of the Universe just happened to have a pattern on it which through some process equivalent to projecting a laser through it generated our 3D world would be impossibly unlikely. However a mathematical equivalence between a theory describing our 3D world and an equivalent theory on a 2D surface would be possible. Why a theory describing our 3D universe would have to have such an equivalence with a theory on a 2D surface seems to me a puzzling question but there could be some underlying reason why the Universe has to be that way - most likely resulting from some symmetry in the universe just like conservation of energy and momentum arise from underlying symmetries.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

Electrons don't do a quick calculation before deciding how much energy to emit as a photon when changing orbitals.

You don't know that for sure. Some theorists believe that is exactly what happens. In particular, all the possible places that an electron could go contribute to the place that it does go. And in Many Worlds, it goes everywhere, splitting into different universes with each opportunity. I even heard a theory that there is actually (whatever actually means) only one electron in the entire universe, and we see its work all around us.

I've long wrestled with the idea of whether or not the universe is simply its description. i.e. it's nothing but maths. My gut feeling says it's more than that. But who really knows. You and I are as likely to be simulations in a relatively dumb computing device. That would certainly account for much of the strangeness that goes on, as anything can be done in software.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency - @Mike Bell

The "one electron" idea was kicked around by Feynman and someone else (was it Wheeler? I forget) long ago. It doesn't work. It never reached theory status, it's a discarded hypothesis.

"Many worlds" does not mean splitting into different universes for all the infinite numbers of possible paths.

I am not aware of any theorist who has ever imputed consciousness or calculating power to electrons.

And finally, "we are simulations in a computer" is just an updated rewrite of the "God did it". Where did the computer come from? It implies an infinite regress - computers all the way down - just as the question "OK, where did God come from" results in gods all fhe way down. Bill Ockham pointed out the absurdity of this position around 700 years ago, but news travels slowly in some parts. Even now somewhere in the US a Creationist is putting forward the "7 proofs of the existence of God" while an exam question in the theology department of a proper university might be to take one of them and explain why it doesn't work.

As a very approachable book about all this, could I suggest Genius, the book about the life and work of Richard Feynman which goes into some depths on these topics as it explains how his thinking developed? The stuff you are referencing is mainly from his period.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency - @Mike Bell

IIRC it was Feynman's supervisor who came up with the idea that there's just a single electron. I'm not saying it's a valid description of reality, but is an indication that there are many seemingly odd theories bandied around.

There are different interpretations of Many Worlds. I'm giving you one now: Everything that could be, ever has been, and ever will be simply is. 'Splitting into different universes' is a succinct and decidedly human description of events that I've heard used many times. Given that neither you nor I really know what's going on, I wouldn't get too hung up on metaphysical descriptions of reality.

As to us being simulations in a computer, did I say it was a particular type of computer? With a creator? Or that it exists in any real sense that you would understand? No. I am suggesting that any physical rules - even the particular weird ones we see around us - could be invoked in a simulation. The 'design' of such a 'computer' could be far simpler than the reality - or multiple realities - that it generates Something that William of Ockham might have appreciated.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency - @Mike Bell

"And finally, "we are simulations in a computer" is just an updated rewrite of the "God did it". Where did the computer come from? It implies an infinite regress - computers all the way down - just as the question "OK, where did God come from" results in gods all fhe way down. Bill Ockham pointed out the absurdity of this position around 700 years ago, but news travels slowly in some parts. Even now somewhere in the US a Creationist is putting forward the "7 proofs of the existence of God" while an exam question in the theology department of a proper university might be to take one of them and explain why it doesn't work."

If it is possible to create a simulation that's indistinguishable from reality, then it stands to reason that many such simulations will exist throughout space and time.

Therefore, the likelihood is that what we experience is in fact a simulation.

Re: It's just mathematical equivalency

You got it. and with all the matter in the universe, we can never build a computer large enough to simulate all the matter in the universe, so we can't answer the ultimate questions of 'where did it all come from' or 'is there a free will or is the Universe simply evolving from one particular starting point'. We can speculate and disprove a lot of wrong hypotheses, that's about it.

Re: What?

Reminds me of ...

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful (as the babel fish) could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

Re: Gotta love physicists

The TV bit is rubbish

Sorry the TV bit is rubbish. The 2D TVs we have just utilise perspective the same as in paintings. The 3D TVs work by sending slightly different images to our two eyes.

The way holographic images work is by creating an interference pattern by illuminating an object with two laser beams. The image is then reconstructed by projecting a laser beam identical to one of those used in the recording through the interference pattern which is then diffracted and reproduces an image of the original object.

In the case of the Holographic universe we have to be talking about something other than laser light but if it follows the same principles you would still need something to reconstruct the 3D effect and it would have to be projected into a 3rd dimension. If space-time are part of the holography itself then what is this third dimension made of ? Unlike in the article I don't see why beings who are themselves within the holgraphic images would be expected to see this projection. I suppose it might be possible if the image was projected out into a 3rd dimension and then bounced back towards the holgraphic surface by a mirror but I'm not even sure that would work since the image bounced back would probably interfere with the holographic image.

Re: The TV bit is rubbish

Come on now, the guy has a point. All that about TVs *IS* rubbish.

A simple TV show could never be thought of as being populated by anybody at all, let alone anyone capable of experiencing it from within; a computer game would be a much better analogy - indeed, in a sophisticated enough simulation agents within the game would "perceive" space around them and might possibly even be self-aware - except in that case, a 3D simulation would be perceived *AS 3D* by said agents, and the fact that *WE* might be looking at it through a 2D projection on a monitor would have absolutely no impact as far as they are concerned - that world *DOES NOT* "exist" on that 2D surface; we could detach the monitor and even completely shut down the renderer, and the internal physics simulation would continue to run, in "3D", for all participants living inside that simulation.

There might be interesting and profound implications of the science discussed, but illustrating it with a TV is a fail.

DIsagreement is optional and fattening

In the same way, there’s no simple way to tell if the world we see around us is an illusion, a collective hallucination or the real 3D deal.

This is retarded. There is nothing more real than the real, so by definition this is the real, whether you find a complex mathematical mapping of some lower-dimensional space onto a "pseudo" 4-D space or not and declare that lower-dimensional space to be "the real thing".

Btw. here is a discussion of the announcement from a couple of years back:

But some experts on the holographic principle think the experiment is completely off-target. “There is no relationship between the argument [Hogan] is making and the holographic principle,” Bousso says. “None whatsoever. Zero.” The problem lies not in Hogan’s interpretation of the uncertainty relationship, but rather in “the first step of his analysis,” Bousso contends.

Bousso notes that a premise of special relativity called Lorentz invariance says the rules of physics should be the same for all observers, regardless of how they are moving relative to one another. The holographic principle maintains Lorentz invariance, Bousso says. But Hogan’s uncertainty formula does not, he argues: An observer standing in the lab and another zipping past would not agree on how much an interferometer’s beam splitter jitters. So Hogan’s uncertainty relationship cannot follow from the holographic principle, Bousso argues.

You would never know. The mainframe would eventually boot up again, fix the filesystem, possibly require some tape backups if anything exceeded the speed of light during the power loss brown-out, then soldier on - how would you know how many times have you been restored from a backup...?

Re: @DropBear

But is reality really real?

Questioning whether reality is real is one of those things that, although appealing to a stoned undergrad, doesn't really make much sense. It's reality, what else is it going to be?

What it is made of is undeniably an interesting question, but whatever the form of the structure is ( a holographic sheen on the surface of an n-dimensional super--bubble perhaps ) it won't change how real it is.

"the world we see around us [..] may be real"

“If we find a noise we can’t get rid of..."

Good luck to the Boffins on this one! If I remember correctly, the last lot that found 'a noise they couldn't get rid of' had to spend a very long time tweaking and measuring, including time scraping bird shit off the antenna, before they could reasonably say that the noise probably wsn't an artifact.

I seem to recall reading this experimental procedure before

Re: I seem to recall reading this experimental procedure before

Indeed. One of the most important experiments in physics, although it routinely gets overlooked when documentaries are looking for the big moments in science.

It also sounds suspiciously like the gear used to look for gravitational waves. In fact, from the description I can't see how you'd tell the difference if you did detect something. Presumably there'll be a subtle signature in the signal that's below the noise level of journalists.

Unfortunately, that won't prove anything. Even if it's "real"quantum jitteryness, there is this thing called thermal noise. I don't think it will be possible to tell them apart. But, go on. Surprise me.

And Swarthy is right, it looks just like a pair of Micholsen-Morely devices. And if it finds something, then we have a whole lot of physics to do over again.

While I'm here, I should set out a few of these! !!! !! !!!! !!!!! !! !

Trillion defined

Re: Trillion defined

Seems a touch inconsistent since I was expecting it to be 10^24 instead (if a million is 10^6 and a billion is 10^12). I would've thought 10^18 would've been described as a million billion instead of a trillion.

Problem I have with the hologram theory...

How does a hologram encoded in two dimensions represent anything other than a 2-D surface projected into three dimensions? Holograms as we know them are merely infinitely thin projected surfaces; they're unable to encode any concept of solidity. One object hidden behind or placed inside another would cease to exist.

I supppose if you imagine everything to be at least semi-permeable to at least some form of radiation, you'd have the equivalent of nested coloured glass objects, which could be represented holographically. But still, is that enough information to represent the properties of everything intersecting a particular line of sight?

Re: Problem I have with the hologram theory...

The concept of solidity is assumed by the observer. Studies of matter at the subatomic level show that matter is much less solid than it seems. The analogy has been made that atoms are like tiny solar systems with vastly more space in and around them than actual stuff. That and the understanding of how we experience the world around us through sight, sound, touch shows that the construct of reality we build in our minds probably doesn't have that much to do with what is really real.

I am Billy Pilgrim and I have become unstuck in time. Now, I'm just waiting for everyone else to catch up. The tall cool one 'cause it makes it so much easier to become unstuck.

Re: Problem I have with the hologram theory...

Doesn't matter how small something really is; there's a fundamental difference between a 2-D shell in 3-D space and a 3-D object. Then again, considering electron orbits, maybe it is just shells all the way down...

Re: Sign of the times

Testing for a simulation

If they find the universe does appear to be a hologram, maybe they can figure out how to test if it is a simulation. I tend to think there's a good chance it is, not based on the argument in the paper a few years ago (the "if we ever create small simulations of reality, then the odds are good that we live in such a simulation") but simply because quantum mechanics makes a lot more sense when viewed that way.

Think about trying to simulate a universe, or part of one, and the restrictions you'll have both based on the hardware (what we observe as the "speed of light" could be to cover the latency inherent in whatever hyper-parallel computing setup runs the simulation) and software - the uncertainty principle could be lazy evaluation, wave/particle duality the result of using the same code to cover both, planck length and quantum states of energy exposing the resolution of the simulation, etc. If the universe is being simulated just for humanity (or just for you) then a lot of the stuff outside our solar system could be simulated at a far lower resolution for both space and time.

In order to really prove the universe is a simulation, you'd almost need to find an obvious bug or exploit. Maybe the reason there are no intelligent aliens about is that they've found a root exploit and the admin of the simulator caused their star to go supernova to limit the damage.

Re: Testing for a simulation

Here is one idea:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847

And a general audience version: http://www.phys.washington.edu/users/savage/Simulation/Universe/

TLDR: If we are living in a "beta" simulation, there are possible ways to find it out, and the paper proposes one way, by measuring ultra high energy cosmic rays, and check the direction of travel of the highest energy particles (near so-called GZK cut-off). The idea is that hypothetical simulation might reveal its symmetry if the highest energy particles are following a certain direction.

I am not a physicist, so I have no clue if this could work, or whether eventually detected phenomena can be explained with something else (most probably IMO).

I like to look at the entire Universe as possibly being one big computer simulation.

In fact, simulation or not, the Universe does seem to act as a computer. Especially, if quantisation of space-time is confirmed it will make it that much more plausible.

Basically, if you count each quantum number of each particle as a bit of information and you define a few simple laws on how they are to interact, then you can create a grid of discrete cells - be they a processor registers or memory cells, depends on your budget - and calculate each local interaction every cycle, which on macro basis will automatically produce "observable" Universe which we see today.

The speed of light will then be defined by the maximum processing speed of this machine and if mass is the quantity taking most power to process, then as you calculate a group of fast moving particles as they go from cell to cell, if the particles have a rest mass they will become more and more difficult to calculate and you will start skipping cycles on their interaction in favour of keeping them moving. So, they will look to the outside cells as if their local time has slowed down in relativistic fashion, so to say.

This is just a thought experiment. I am not crazy enough (yet) to claim this is the actual reality. But it might be. Or not.

They're catching on!

or perhaps

the universe is the next generation of computer built by the pan-dimensional beings who, in our existence, resemble white mice.

Deep Thought provided the answer. Earth was commissioned to provide the question. When that came back in somewhat nonsensical form, The Universe was commissioned to explain the question in such way that the answer makes sense.

Hologram detector detector

All this assumes that the virtual simulation we're in doesn't have code that detects that the self-aware programs running on it are trying to see whether they are self-aware programs, and lies to them.

We must be in a simulation, how else do you explain the moon being the right size to precisely blot out the Sun. What are the chances of that happening by chance?

So when they're done with this the next step is to prove the simulation argument by showing we live in a simulated universe. Then, of course, we need to set up a communication interface with the engineers so they can send us the documentation for the simulator, allowing us at last to just RTFM instead of fumbling around like a bunch of n00bs.

Not necessarily. If you plotted an item's PRIOR position, then when you get the current position, you can get BOTH its position (you just got it) AND its velocity (by calculating the delta vs. the prior position).

The trick with quantum theory is that this method doesn't work because the very act of measuring position alters properties too much to be able to use it in conjunction with a second measurement (IIRC they measure velocity not of a single thing but of a stream of them).